Tuesday, June 17, 2014

rapid flow

If the flow of our unschooling life was a river journey, my favorite kind of days would be spent floating along at a gentle pace with a few swirls of excitement and occasional wild animal sightings. Lately, it's been more like a white water rapid journey and we're just trying to keep our heads above water. It's all been a swirl of good fun and excitedly chosen activities, but there hasn't been a lot of time for relaxing and processing. After a while, it tests our patience and abilities, but, ahhhh, what a ride!

Let's see, in the two weeks since I posted here last, we've had a trip into the city to meet friends at the zoo and visit another friend at her home. We took a fun ride on a 'Duck' on my birthday (the amphibious land/water vehicle kind of duck), followed by a trip to an old-fashioned candy store. Camille went to a multi-girl sleepover which included shooting bb guns and driving around on four wheelers. We had a sleepover at our house that included a midnight full-body-face-paint zombie attack. We had friends out for a visit with music playing, origami folding, and sandpit digging. Then summer school started. Since my girls don't attend school or do school-at-home, they love the chance to take some fun classes at the local public school and eat in the cafeteria for three weeks at the beginning of summer. Camille has a class where they write, act in, shoot, edit, and create a soundtrack for a movie in small groups, and an engineering class where they create a 6-foot-tall roller coaster for marbles out of simple supplies such as cardstock paper and tape. Sylvia chose a class that's all about games (group, individual, indoor, and outdoor) and a cooking class where the kids, prep, cook, eat, and make recipe cards for 30 different foods over the course of three weeks. Summer school is in the mornings and our afternoons and evenings have included trips to the park with friends, multiple playdates (often with giant bubbles, sometimes with homemade play dough or poi for spinning), gardening, picnicking, planting seeds at a local pumpkin farm, saxophone lessons, ballet classes, a potluck and bridging ceremony with the Girl Scouts, chasing fireflies after dark, and strawberry picking and jam making. My parents visited on Father's Day weekend. We spent an afternoon at one of the largest waterparks in the world and then grilled out the next day. Plus, of course there's the usual cooking, cleaning, laundering, weeding, animal care, etc. Tomorrow, we wake up crazy-early to pick up baby geese and ducklings from the post office, followed by summer school, a saxophone lesson, friends over, and then ballet class after dinner. OK, I'd be pretty surprised if anyone actually read all of that. I guess I just wanted to see it all written out in one spot and not keep wondering why I feel so tired :) . I haven't even been bringing my camera with me everywhere. It feels kind of weird. Alive, full of energy and new experiences, but at a somewhat unsustainable pace for us (especially the more introverted of us), but aah, the lazy days of summer are in front of us ... just a few more exhilarating rapids to navigate. Here we go.

I might not have captured every bit of it through my lens, but of course, it did not all go by without being documented :)

family selfie on the Duck

Camille's birthday portraits of me: all of them, unedited :)

Hello, 37!

Sylvia and Ayla especially enjoyed the splashdown as we drove into the river at the end of the road.

giant bubbles at a friend's house

spinning poi

aerial silks

sharing giant bubbles with more friends

...and play dough, too.

mulching the garden

planting seeds at a pumpkin farm with Girl Scouts

happy to be with my Pops on Father's Day

the girls sharing Father's Day with their Papa and their Abuelo

Ayla and her Gigi collecting eggs from the coop

strawberry fields forever

honey-sweetened strawberry rhubarb jam

I think a lot of families sustain this kind of busyness on a regular basis. We seem to thrive best when we have a good balance of excitement and social goodness as well as time for quiet reflection and individual pursuits, but that balance doesn't have to happen all in a week or two. I t balances out over the course of our seasons. For now, I'd best get some sleep. Good night, y'all. I hope you're enjoying this season in the way that suits you best!

i would pull my hair out with that schedule! i am having a hard time getting the girls to the one scheduled thing, swim lessons. i dont want to do any of it. i want to stay home all day and all night. i want to have nowhere to go. i am working on not planning anything. only 2 more swim lessons...my kids have not been getting along lateley either which is really getting to me. they are not listening, talking back, and fighting constantly. esp taven. i am going insane! it's just a phase right???!!!!!

Oh! You guys did actually read it ;) My kids wake up excited each morning for the day to come (yup, even my not-early risers) which is why we're still going with it. I am the one (along with my more introverted daughter) who is prone to meltdowns from over-busyness :) I usually guard against a full schedule, but I can't deny all of the happiness and learning that this run of go-go-go has brought us lately!

Megan, I hear you!!! As soon as I think I have a phase figured out, a new challenge comes along.

About Me

I am Nikole, mama to three lovely and lively kiddos. Cam is 14 years old, Sylvi is 11, and Ayla is 8. This blog is generally a chronicle of our country-living, respectful-parenting, joy-seeking, radical-unschooling life. It is a swirl of fun, learning, and creativity, all in a ragamuffin style ;-)